Each One, Pull One-gctid51623

[NyameNti]

EACH ONE,  PULL ONE

We must say it all,  and as clearly
as we can.   For, even before we are dead,
they are busy
trying to bury us.

Were we black? Were we women? Were we gay?
Were we the wrong shade of black? Were we yellow?
Did we, God forbid, love the wrong person, country
or politics? Were we Agnes Smedley or John Brown?

But, most of all, did we write exactly what we saw,
as clearly as we could? Were we unsophisticated
enough to cry and scream?

Well, then, they will fill our eyes,
our ears, our noses and our mouths
with the mud
of oblivion.  They will chew up
our fingers in the night.  They
will pick their teeth with our pens.
They will sabotage both our children
and our art.

Because when we show what we see,
they will discern the inevitable:
We do not worship them.

We do not worship them.
We do not worship what they have made.
We do not trust them.
We do not believe what they say.

We do not love their efficiency.
Or their power plants.
We do not love their factories.
Or their smog.

We do not love their television programs.
Or their radioactive leaks.
We find their papers boring.
We do not worship their cars.
We do not worship their blondes.
We do not envy their penises.
We do not think much
of their Renaissance.
We are indifferent to England.
We have grave doubts about their brains.

In short, we who write, paint, sculpt, dance
or sing
share the intelligence and thus the fate
of all our people in this land.

We are not different from them,
neither above nor below,
outside nor inside.
We are the same.
And we do not worship them.

We do not worship them.
We do not worship their movies.
We do not worship their songs.
We do not think their newscasts
cast the news.
We do not admire their president.
We know why the white house is white.
We do not find their children irresistible;
We do not agree they should inherit the earth.

But lately you have begun to help them
bury us.  You who said: King was just a womanizer;
Malcolm, just a thug;  Sojourner, folksy;  Hansberry,
a traitor (or whore, depending);  Fannie Lou Hamer,
merely spunky; Zora Hurston, Nella Larsen, Toomer:
reactionary, brainwashed, spoiled by whitefolks, minor;
Agnes Smedley, a spy.

I look into your eyes;
you are throwing in the dirt.
You, standing in the grave
with me.  Stop it!

Each one must pull one.

Look, I, temporarily on the rim
of the grave,
have grasped my mother's hand
my father's leg.
There is the hand of Robeson
Langston's thigh
Zora's arm and hair
your grandfather's lifted chin
the lynched woman's elbow
what you've tried to forget
of your grandmother's frown.

Each one, pull one back into the sun

We who have stood over
so many graves
know that no matter what they do
all of us must live
or none.

This is the message given to me today.   I can not recall the author of this poem...but her words are vibrating within my spirit-RIGHT NOW:sankofa: